


All I Dare Ask

by jazzjo



Series: AoS Amalie-verse [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-03
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-28 00:37:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2712548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzjo/pseuds/jazzjo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tiger lily means ‘I dare you to love me’. Some references to Imagine Me and You. Mainly the flower. </p>
<p>Companion piece to Your Hand in Mine (set post May and Simmons conversation in chapter 6) and Back to the Beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All I Dare Ask

Pairing: Skye/Jemma Simmons

Summary: The tiger lily means ‘I dare you to love me’. Some references to Imagine Me and You. Mainly the flower. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Off topic, but do you remember what you told me that day, when you ran off to the arcade because they were going to send you away, and I searched all over town to find you?” Jemma brought up, leaning against the lab table as she filled a pipette. 

 

Skye tilted her head to the side, a slanted grin blossoming on her face as she replied, “Of course. Your aunt nearly slapped my head clean off when she finally found you.”

 

 

_“Don’t you dare forget me, Jemma Simmons.”  
_

 

_“I don’t think I’ll quite be able to remember anything else.”_

 

 

Placing the pipette in the holder next to her, Jemma briskly made her way to the climate controlled cupboard in the corner of the laboratory, extricating an item that she had placed in there earlier, shielding it behind her body as she walked back towards Skye. 

 

“You told me that day,” Jemma began, staring down at her feet, “That you’d always told people that you hated presents because they so often were given out of obligation, with no real meaning behind them.”

 

These past few days since they had met again had been filled with hours of catching up, generally during times that were technically after hours already. On the first day they had reconnected, Jemma had sheepishly admitted that she never really left the Triskelion on time, that she had no one to go back to, and that even Fitz would leave about an hour past when their shift ended, but she would stay a little longer.

 

Surprisingly enough, Skye hadn’t done anything to change her habits except offer to stay with her. 

 

 

_“Don’t lie, Jems, you love it when I stay late with you.”_

 

_“You’re my biggest distraction. I’d say I was no doubt more productive before you came around.”_

 

_“Hah! You didn’t say you didn’t love it!”_

 

 

Skye nodded, a question in her eyes as she lifted her head from where it was focused on the programme running on her beat up laptop.

 

“This one does, so I hope you don’t mind,” Jemma deposited a singular bloom on the keyboard of Skye’s laptop, before scurrying back to her lab table and continuing the prep work she had previously been doing for the next day’s work. 

 

Picking up the vermillion coloured flower, Skye twirled it in her hand as she contemplated it, a smile blossoming on her features. 

 

“A tiger lily?” Skye intoned, “Pray tell, all knowing Jemma Simmons, what does a tiger lily mean?”

 

Jemma blushed, her face as red as the tiger lily was orange.

 

“Come on, Jemma, what does it mean?” Skye implored, her eyes searching the shorter girl’s own pair for any hint of an answer, “Use your ‘scientific opinion’ or your nonscientific opinion and enlighten a girl!”

 

 

_“I want a home.”_

 

_“You live right next door to me and my Aunt Maria, Mary Sue.”_

 

_“A real home. One no one can take me out of, that I belong in no matter what my adoption papers say.”_

 

_“Oh.”_

 

_“The closest I’ve got now is you, J. Your eyes and the sky above us. That’s my home.”_

 

 

Staring at the pipette in her hand and the agar plate that lay on the table, Jemma pressed her lips together and set to filling the wells in the agar medium precisely. 

 

“You do realise I can google it, right?” Stabbing at the keys of her laptop with one hand, Skye stated pointedly, “Typing: ‘Dear google, what is the meaning of a tiger lily?’ Press search.”

 

For a moment she glanced up from the tiger lily in her hand and set her gaze on Jemma. 

 

Her hair was tied back, in an immaculate ponytail apart from a curl that had escaped and now hung just beside her left ear. 

 

Her forehead wrinkled in gentle ridges as she focused on the science in front of her.

 

Her hands were steady in the way Skye’s had never been when she was younger — too active, too impatient, for anything of hers to stay still — but they were better now. Not as steady as Jemma’s though. 

 

Pulling her eyes away from Jemma, she refocused on her laptop in front of her, the hand that had been keyboard smashing previously hovering over the Google search bar. 

 

Tempted to stamp her foot, but knowing damn well that that would startle Jemma out of her focus and make her ruin her jelly plating thing, Skye chose instead to speak more impatiently this time, “Jem-ma, I am actually starting to make this googling thing a serious consideration now.”

 

 

_“What does love feel like?”_

 

_“Hmm?”_

 

_“Love. What’s it feel like?”_

 

_“Depends on what sort, I suppose.”_

 

_“I wish I knew, J. I think I’ll never know.”_

 

_“I’m sure you will, Mary Sue. Whoever gets your love will be immensely lucky.”_

 

 

When her entire plate of agar had been filled as precisely as humanly possible, Jemma put down the pipette and set the plate into the fermentation chamber. Pulling off her latex gloves, she knew she could no longer avoid it. 

 

Stupid girl, giving her a gift when she did not even have the guts to tell her the reason why. 

 

“A tiger lily, it means—” Jemma unconsciously stepped backwards and angled her body away from Skye as she continued her stilted explanation, “A tiger lily means ‘I dare you to love me’, in the language of flowers.”

 

 

_“What are you most scared of, Mary Sue?”_

 

_“Nothing.”_

 

_“No one is scared of nothing. You don’t have to hide from me.”_

_“Love, maybe. I dunno.”_

 

_“-“_

 

_“You, J?”_

 

_“Not knowing.”_

 

_“Not knowing what?”_

 

_“Just— just not knowing.”_

 

 

Jemma’s feet carried her to the corner of the laboratory, where the decontamination shower was. Sinking to the ground against the cool wall that the shower was on, Jemma was darn near tempted to pull on the water lever. 

 

After all, soaking wet would only be a really, really minuscule step further on the embarrassment scale from where she was now. 

 

 

_“What do you wish for, when we see shooting stars up here?”_

 

_“Popsicles. An orange cat.”_

 

_“I dream of loving someone who loves me. Who understands me.”_

 

_“Who doesn’t stand between you and science, you mean?”_

 

_“That too.”_

 

_“I dream of home. My home. Sometimes I dream of my parents—”_

 

_“—But other times you think you’re better off not knowing.”_

 

_“Yep.”_

 

 

Skye stood stock still for a moment, the tiger lily in her hands falling mutedly to the sterile surface of the metal table she stood above, right next to her laptop. 

 

Picking it back up, she took brisk, wide strides towards the decontamination shower. 

 

Coming to a stop next to Jemma Simmons’ thin frame slumped against the wall, she allowed the flower to once more fall from her hands, landing soundlessly in Jemma’s lap. 

 

 

_“I’m not friends with you to make a point, you know that, don’t you?”_

 

_“Mmhm.”_

 

_“Really, J, you’re more than your IQ, or how many grades you’ve skipped, or the fact that you’re working on your second PhD already.”_

 

_“But we’re completely different people, Mary Sue.”_

 

_“You having nearly two PhDs already is brilliant and all, but I’m friends with you because I like you as a person.”_

 

_“The rest of them on the street, they say you would not even give me the time of day if I was half this smart.”_

 

_“You’re my best friend, J, genius or not.”_

 

_“Okay then.”_

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jemma lifted her eyes from the white tiles of the lab floor once she felt the weight of the flower land in her lap. 

 

Don’t you dare cry, Simmons. You took the risk. 

 

“I dare you back, J,” Skye’s voice wavered as she enunciated the ‘k’, breaking for a fraction of a second, “You wanted it to go both ways, remember?”

 

Offering her hand for Jemma to take, she pulled the smaller girl to her feet and received the flower as it was handed back to her. 

 

“Challenge accepted, Mary Sue.”

 

“Shut up, Simmons, my name is Skye!” 


End file.
